Everybody here probably has a job, but in many parts of the worldpeople apply for a hundred jobs and get nothing. Here is an idea to help them:

Competition is the reason that stores or shopsusually don't have shortages of products.

What if competition was used in other aspects of life, including government?Competition has always resulted in improvements.Imagine a society free from job shortages.

Imagine getting a better job, or better housing or other benefits!Competition will result in everything getting better, not just jobs.

The existing government monopoly does a poor job at improving everybodys life.Even if it is great in your area, it's not like that for everyone.

The plan to divide land into economic regions that haveto compete to improve everything.

It starts small, and some of the regions are managed by nonprofit organizationsor other groups instead of the local government.

All regions compete with each other to do a better job for the people.

Everybody votes on which region is better.

If a region is popular, like it has a better economy and more jobs, thenthat region gets more land.

If a region has a job shortage and nobody votes for it, then that landis given to one of the better regions and so it becomes part ofa popular region, with plenty of jobs and other benefits.

This kind of competition will quickly result in all regions getting better.It is a business friendly environment, so we get a stronger economy.Theoretically anybody could form a group and run their own region.

Obviously there are a lot of details needed to make this work,but it is all figured out already.

The bottom line is that competition will improve everything,as it always does.

Sound unworkable?Regions are essentially an improved version of special economic zones.India has already made a lot of special economic zones, and theeconomy improved because of it.

But these regions are far better than special economic zonesbecause nobody gets left out with regions.

How would you level the playing field on areas of a country that have natural resources to manufacture products vs the ones that have none.Or better yet what happens to the zones that have none do they become ghost town areas of a country?

How would you have fair competition if zones are located in areas where say, weather limits a zone from manufacturing year round vs areas that have milder weather.

What about lifestyle, not everything is about money exactly. I know for my city, people live here because its very pretty and has an all weather climate. We have no major industry to speak of and wages here for similar jobs in the rest of the country are much lower. (we refer to that as sunshine tax)Do we destroy a place's natural beauty just to accommodate an industry here because it has nice weather and would allow for year round production of a product.?

What about shipping distance sometimes the inconvenience and cost of shipping out weigh any advantage to centralized manufacturing.

The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.~Robert A Heinlein

Nom_de_Plume wrote:Although I really like Joe's answer it doesn't actually open up a dialogue.

Hah.

I don't think there's a dialogue to be had. The problem, as is the usually for these sort of utopian exercises, is that it treats the world like a game of Risk: the board is flat, the number of pieces is limited, the rules are simple and easily enforced, everyone can see what everyone else is doing, the goal is obvious and single-minded, and there's nothing of any real value at stake.

"Well, I like idea X, therefore we should throw out everything else and just run on idea X" is a disaster even on paper, let alone in the messy real world.

Sounds like disaster. If jobs and lives of comfort are the end goal. The strictly utilitarian thing to do would just be kick out all the poor unwashed jobless bums from your country and/or rob other governments of resources. Then point at your demography data and claim victory.

televator wrote:Sounds like disaster. If jobs and lives of comfort are the end goal. The strictly utilitarian thing to do would just be kick out all the poor unwashed jobless bums from your country and/or rob other governments of resources. Then point at your demography data and claim victory.

Ok thanks nice but although it sounds nice and rosey poppy in theory there is the human nature aspect of this whole scenario that seems to be being overlooked.there is that "grass is always greener" mentality that isn't being taken into account.communism to date has never really worked, it always sounds good in theory, everyone will be equal, everyone will do their fair share of the work if we provide them with the basics etc etc.usually what ends up happening in reality is that working hours get longer, standard of living goes down and no one is happy at all.Also the whole land allocation things seems a bit foggy to me, what happens to the current land owners in a region? Who controls the land and who doles it out to the various groups. Even though I read your original link and basically dismissed it as complete rot, I think it's always good as a thought exercise to think about these things just to see if it's a solvable puzzle.I guess my final issue would be right back to that human nature thing again. People, in general are not content creatures, we're always trying to do something......

What's to stop a group saying man, I really hate living up here in the frozen north manufacturing solar panels close to this cadmium mine, so our costs are lower.We only have road access 5 months of the year and we're freezing our bollocks off.What say we build a tank and take over the tourist area with the nice beach and build them there instead.

The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.~Robert A Heinlein

televator wrote:Sounds like disaster. If jobs and lives of comfort are the end goal. The strictly utilitarian thing to do would just be kick out all the poor unwashed jobless bums from your country and/or rob other governments of resources. Then point at your demography data and claim victory.

You've been reading Mitt Romney's personal emails again, haven't you?

Typical Rethuglican MO. Just cheat and steal your way toward a goal. Oh, and don't forget to go out of your way to crush the helpless even more than necessary and feel like a big man while doing it.

Nom_de_Plume wrote:What's to stop a group saying man, I really hate living up here in the frozen north manufacturing solar panels close to this cadmium mine, so our costs are lower.We only have road access 5 months of the year and we're freezing our bollocks off.What say we build a tank and take over the tourist area with the nice beach and build them there instead.

The same thing that stops them now. The government.

Also, all regions are part of the alliance which oversees them. Every region sends representatives to the alliance so they work together to prevent problems.

Of course, in the future all manufacturing will be automated anyway.This process has already started, and is not my fault.

The company making products for Apple computer company is only usingabout 30,000 robots now, but they have plans to increase to a million robotswithin a few years.

Of course, in the future all manufacturing will be automated anyway.This process has already started, and is not my fault.

The company making products for Apple computer company is only usingabout 30,000 robots now, but they have plans to increase to a million robotswithin a few years.

Which is great news if you could just step out of that "competition thinking" for a second. Instead of being afraid of robots taking your job, consider that everything in the world is ultimately bought with labour. Isn't it a great thing it's the robots that now have to do the labour instead of us? It should make everyone richer. Something is very wrong with the capitalist model, if means of producing goods for less labour is a threat to well-being.

I do understand your worry, though. If the companies don't have any need of you as a worker because the robots do your job more efficiently, and as a customer because as unemployed you can't afford to buy anything, you stand to become obsolete to economy and to society at large. My suggestion is not to adopt the morals of inherently amoral entities that companies are.

Similar to the free trade zones in various developing countries and the way states of the US compete for corporations my opinion would be that this regime would start a race for the bottom and end very poorly. People tend to be fairly immobile, especially if they are not well off. Sure they may have the perfect opportunity in another region but that doesn't mean they can get there to take advantage of it.

The problem is very complicated and any simple answer is likely to not be a very good one.

Sounds like you're trying to use competition to come up with a solution that is quite close to being anti-thesis of economic competition, free markets etc. The first thing that came to my mind when reviewing the original post was that wouldn't it be titillating if of the competing regions people would vote to live in one with relatively big government and planned markets.

nice wrote:Competition is the reason that stores or shopsusually don't have shortages of products.

I think this is correct. Companies compete and develop production in quantity and quality.

BUT, .... and its really a big BUT...

The capitalist economy overproduces

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overproduction#Inevitability

According to Marx, in capitalism, improvements in technology and rising levels of productivity increase the amount of material wealth (or use values) in society while simultaneously diminishing the economic value of this wealth, thereby lowering the rate of profit,a tendency that leads to the paradox, characteristic of crises in capitalism, of "poverty in the midst of plenty," or more precisely, crises of overproduction in the midst of underconsumption.

Now simplified and applied to the REAL WORLD. In 2008 we saw a global crises of capitalism. This was really a delayed crises, delayed by credit. (Credit crunch). The 'market' which is made up mostly by workers could not buy back what they have produced. And in a general sense more is produced than is able to be consumed. (And this comes down to profit. And is why say's law is wrong. The workers inherently get less as part of the value of their labour is accumulated in to profit. i.e profit is a form of exploitation.)

Due to overproduction and the collapse of the credit system propping up the economy throughout the 1990's until 2008 . Demand to reinvest profits into production fell along with the collapse of the financial and banking sector. A reduction in investment and a cut in production means an increase in unemployment. The government (at least in the UK) bailed out the private sector and rendered private debt into public debt and set up austerity packages.

So basically...'competition' within capitalism caused the problem. And your idea is a Utopian project. Flawed from the premise that competition is an inherent good in the economy

A solution would be nationalization of the banks and also the tops of the economy in a direction of a planned economy at the same time converting the state into a democratically controlled workers state. Along with repressive measures against private landlords( nationalize all housing) and abolish private profit of those nationalized companies. Which will enable increase in public expenditure for public services. And an increase in the minimum wage. Just simple socialism. (Which has a utopian history also see robert owen, but it also developed into a materialist solution see engles- socialism , scientific and utopian.

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil...there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy." Albert Einstein

I agree, but every country will be responsible for making the first fewtest regions within its borders, and they will have plenty of expertsto oversee everything so it gets off to a good start.

Also the alliance consists of representatives from every region, andwill have a vested interest in ensuring that this works well.

There are a lot of humanitarians in the world. Letting them all joina global team, like the alliance, could result in a team so large thatthey could pool resources and accomplish things that they cannot today.